An extremist, not a fanatic

October 24, 2013

The rhetoric of inequality

Yesterday afternoon the BBC gave us - inadvertently of course - a wonderful example of how ideology helps sustain class divisions.

On The Media Show, David Liddiment said his commissioning of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? was a "huge risk." His interview was immediately followed by news that 800 people could lose their jobs if the Grangemouth petrochemical plant shuts down. This shows how whilst bosses talk about taking risk, it is workers who actually bear it.

To ram this point home, Mr Liddiment said that the danger he faced was of a "huge rollocking" - ahh, diddums - or "maybe" losing his job.

I'll concede that bosses' job tenure is often quite short. But this is no evidence they take risk. For one thing, their big salaries are (or should be regarded as) in part a risk premium. For another, they often walk into other jobs; management might not be a transferable skill but rent-seeking is. And, of course, they oftenleave with big payoffs. And this is not to mention the physical risks; factory workers are in far more danger of death or injury than TV executives - which is powerful refutation of the just world hypothesis.

Why, then, do bosses they present themselves as risk-takers? A paper by Olivier Fournout helps explain. He shows how the image of the boss has much in common with that of movie heroes. They are men of will-power, skill and resolve - often mavericks - who are on missions for the greater good.

Talk of "leadership" serves a similar function. It is self-aggrandizing rhetoric which flatters mere functionaries; if you pay people to do as you tell them, you're a boss, not a leader.

What's not so clear is why they do this. One motive, I suspect, is simply to satisfy a narcissistic self-image.

Whatever the motive, the effects are doubly dangerous.

One is that bosses who see themselves as heroic leaders and risk-takers are likely to take big risks (pdf) with their companies, which can end catastrophically.

The other is that such rhetoric serves to legitimate inequalities of income and power. After all, heroes deserve big rewards don't they?

The true tragedy here, of course, is not that bosses do this; we all like to big ourselves up. It's that they get away with it. How often does the media describe bosses as "business leaders"? And how rarely does it describe workers as "risk-takers"?

Comments

There are bosses and there are bosses.

On the one hand there are the sort of rent seeking parasites that infest the management of large companies and public sector at the top levels, people who play with other peoples money and expect to be treated like entrepreneurs, often providing little or no value and recieving huge rewards for things that are outside of their control.

From my own point of view as the boss/owner of a long running SME if the company goes bust my employees would obviously lose there jobs, hopefully, (being a very skilled and useful lot) they would be able to get new ones without too much trouble. They would obviously walk way from the firm without the debts of the firm following them. I'm not trying to trivialise how difficult unemployment is and can be (I've been there myself) but the risks for an owner are often as high or higher.

I would not get redundancy and even if I was able to get another job immediately would still likely go bankrupt and lose my house, savings and everything I have worked for for 20 plus years. I appreciate that's not the same for everyone but it certainly sharpens the wits when it comes to taking risks with the future of the firm.

Good on Rosscoe. My admiration goes to the entrepreneur who does take a risk (of financial ruin) - they sit at the peak of the risk curve and not all that high up the reward curve. As an employee I was happy with low risk (of great riches) and there are farm workers, miners and fisherpersons who seem higher up the risk (of getting killed) curve and lower down the reward curve. But as Rosscoe puts it - there are bosses and there are bosses.

However the question is just how many biz school grads make it to a plummy number? Is it 1 in a 1000, 1 in a 100 or 1 in 10? For therein lies the risk (of great or modest riches) - to be a winner or an also-ran.

Rosscoe, Chris and his mates save their criticism almost exclusively for CEO's and big business which are easy targets, hard-working small business owners like yourself don't seem to come into it which makes we wonder if they really are criticising Capitalism/market economies, or something else.